The latter-day history
of the draught ox in England, 1770–1964*
by E. J. T. Collins
Abstract
Following a short-lived sporadic recovery in the Napoleonic Wars, draught oxen are assumed to have
undergone a demographic collapse and, by the mid-nineteenth century to have been virtually extinct.
This assumption is re-examined to suggest that, while nationally oxen were in retreat, parts of southern
and eastern England, notably the chalk and limestone uplands, where horses had long been the rule,
were experiencing a resurgence. The ‘old’ and ‘new’ traditions are contrasted to show fundamental
differences in function, breeds, management, and environment. The paper also provides a summary
account of the ultimate demise of the ox from the mid-nineteenth century to the disbandment of the
last working team at Cirencester Park in 1964.
In 1930 four fifths of the world’s population were estimated to have been very largely dependant
on animals for inputs of ‘foreign energy’. Although tractor numbers had more than doubled
in the interim, forty years on, livestock still provided 90 per cent of all draught power used
on farms worldwide.1 England stands out as one of the first countries to have replaced horses
by tractors, and at an earlier stage, oxen by horses, a long drawn-out process that began in
medieval times and was still incomplete in the nineteenth century.
I
Professor John Langdon’s seminal study of animal traction on farms in the Middle Ages
has no counterpart for the modern period, for which there exists only the broadest outline,
* This is an expanded version of the author’s paper, ‘The draught ox in England, 1750–1964’, presented at the
annual conference of the British Agricultural History Society at Nottingham in 2008, and is part of a broader
study of the more recent history of working animals in European Agriculture. I am grateful to the following for
their help and advice: Fred Banks, Michael Bayley, Gavin Bowie, Liam Brunt, Gareth Beech, Michael Havinden,
John L. Liebowitz, Susanna Wade Martins, Joe Morris, Francois Sigaut, Paul Starkey, John Walton and Martin
Watts. Oxen and bullocks are herein defined as castrated male cattle aged four years and over. Up to one year old,
they were termed ‘ox calves’, and from one to three years old, ‘steers’. W. L. Rham, The dictionary of the farm, rev.
W. and H. Raynbird (1855), p. 250. M. Watts, Working oxen (1999) is the best and most easily accessible popular
introduction to the topic. See also J. L. Liebowitz’s excellent survey covering Europe and North America: ‘The
persistence of draft oxen in the West’, Material Hist. Rev. 36 (1992), pp. 29–37.
1
A. J. Smith, ‘The role of draught animals in agricultural systems’, paper presented to the ‘Vegetables to Man
Seminar’, Institute of Biology, 1979.
AgHR 58, II, pp. 191–216191
192
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
herewith summarized.2 Already by the late sixteenth century, horses comprised more than
half of the national draught herd, and were predominant down almost the entire eastern side
of the country, and over a large part of the southern chalk-lands. When Young visited the
North and Midlands in the late 1760s, the transition was in full swing or already complete
with, as he put it, the use of oxen ‘rather wearing out’ even in the bovine strongholds of the
south and west.3 The period 1770 to 1815 saw a slowing down, or in some districts a reversal
of the long-term trend, due to a shortage of horses. Vigorous efforts were made to promote
the reintroduction of oxen, with the aims of reducing the cost of field work and freeing large
quantities of oats, hitherto fed to horses, for human consumption.4 Though widely publicized,
notably in the Board of Agriculture reports, the revival is thought to have been sporadic and
elitist, and to have had only a limited impact on the composition of the working herd and on
regional distributions of oxen and horses. The end of the wars saw a speedy renewal of the
downward trend, and by 1850 the virtual eclipse of draught cattle. A mere sprinkling of teams,
owned mainly by gentlemen farmers and traditionalists, survived into the twentieth century.
Long before then the working ox was an archaism, a quaint survival of a bygone age, scarcely
referred to in farming textbooks, or indeed the standard agricultural histories. Moreover, the
most authoritative contemporary account of the power forces of the farm, by J. C. Morton,
published in 1868, makes no mention of them.5
This paper examines the latter-day history of draught oxen from the 1760s up to the
disbandment of the last working team at Park Farm, Cirencester, in 1964. It suggests, contrary
to the received wisdom, that while, nationally, the ox herd declined over the first half of the
nineteenth century by at least three quarters, parts of southern and eastern England experienced
an ox revival, mainly on the lighter soils where the use of oxen had long since ceased, and
the old ox traditions were entirely forgotten. This should not to be confused with the earlier
revival, which had lost impetus by 1815, but which overlapped it. This little-known episode in
livestock history, and the co-existence of two ox traditions, the ‘new’ and the ‘unbroken’, will
now be examined, beginning with a summary review of the regional distribution of oxen and
horses at the close of the eighteenth century.
In the first edition of his Political Arithmetik (1774), Arthur Young estimated the number of
working oxen in England at just over 200,000, or 17 per cent of a combined animal workforce
of 1.2 millions. In 1790, William Marshall proposed a similar ratio, almost certainly plagiarized
from Young’s earlier figure. A sixth of ‘the work of husbandry’, he opined, was performed by
J. Langdon, ‘The economics of horses and oxen in
medieval England’, AgHR 30 (1982), pp. 31–40; id., Horses, oxen and technological innovation: the use of draught
animals in English farming from 1066 to 1500 (1986).
3
A. Young, Six weeks tour of the Southern Counties
(1769), p. 291; id., The farmer’s tour through the east of
England (4 vols, 1771), passim; id., A six week’s tour
through the north of England (4 vols, 1771).
4
For further discussion, see J. Brown, ‘Arable
farming’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The agrarian history
of England and Wales, VI, 1750–1850 (1989), pp. 289–90:
J. S. Creasey, The draught ox (1974); A. Fenton, ‘Draught
2
oxen in Britain’, Narodopisny Vestnik Ceskoslovensky,
3–4 (1968–9), pp. 17–49, repr. in Fenton, The shape of the
past (2 vols, 1985–6), II, p. 2. R. Moore-Colyer, ‘Cattle’, in
Mingay (ed.), Agrarian history, VI, pp. 335–48; R. TrowSmith, A history of British livestock husbandry to 1700
(1957), chs 3, 5, 6; id., A history of British livestock husbandry, 1700–1900 (1959), chs 1, 2, 3, 5, 8; J. A. Perkins,
The ox, the horse and English farming (Working paper
in Economic History, Department of Economics, University of New South Wales, 1975).
5
J. C. Morton, Handbook of farm labour (new edn,
1868).
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 193
ta b l e 1. Regional distribution of working oxen as a percentage of the total animal workforce in
English agriculture, c.1780–1800.
Oxen as percentage of total
animal workforce
Agricultural area
(thousand acres)
Number of oxen
North
5
5202
17,100
E. Midlands
1
3205
2100
East Anglia
0
3096
–
S. Midlands
South and south-east
South-west
West-central
1
1102
720
20–25
2480
33,200
50
822
92,300
53
20,800
30–35
1334
28,700
West Midlands
3
1440
2800
North Midlands
3
1005
2200
22,507
c.200,000
Welsh Borders
England
30
12–15
Note: The following formula was used to determine the numbers of oxen in each region: (region as per cent
of national agricultural land area) x (oxen as per cent of total workforce in each region), weighted by size of
agricultural area (x 7.4) . This assumes a national ox herd of c.200,000 (see n. 7). The size of agricultural regions
is taken from Annual agricultural statistics, 1871.
Sources: principally the Board of Agriculture county reports, Annals of agriculture, and the following surveys by
William Marshall, The rural economy of Gloucestershire (1789), the Midland counties (1790, 1796), West of England
(1796, 1805), Yorkshire (1788, 1796) and those by Arthur Young, The farmer’s tour of the east of England (1771), A
six week’s tour of the southern counties of England (1769) and A six week’s tour through the north of England (1771).
oxen.6 In a seminal study of national energy consumption, Paul Warde put the population at
ten per cent, and this author at 12–15 per cent (see Table 1).7 In contrast to other European
countries, in England, draught oxen were never separately distinguished in the government
statistics, nor in the 1854 Poor Law Agricultural Returns. The Tithe Files, even for parishes
which are known from other sources to have had numerous working oxen, normally make
no reference to them.8 The Civil Defence Returns for Sussex, compiled by churchwardens and
overseers of the poor for each parish in the years 1798–1803, is the only source in which draught
A. Young, Political arithmetik (1774); W. Marshall,
The rural economy of the Midland counties (1790), p. 469.
And other estimates, M. Turner, ‘Counting sheep:
waking up to new livestock numbers in England in 1800’,
AgHR 46 (1998), p. 151; P. Warde, Energy consumption in
England and Wales, 1560–2000 (2007), pp. 40–5. Wrigley
assumes that the agricultural draught herd c.1800,
consisted almost entirely of horses, whereas 10–15 per
cent was comprised of oxen, each one equivalent to 0.6
of a horse. This has implications for Wrigley’s estimates
of draught power per unit area and per worker, and for
differences between French and English agricultural
6
productivity. E. A. Wrigley, ‘Energy availability and
agricultural productivity’, in B. M. S. Campbell and
M. Overton (eds), Land, labour and livestock: historical
studies in European agricultural productivity (1991),
pp. 332–9; id., Continuity and change: the character of
the Industrial Revolution in England (1988), pp. 41–2.
7
Warde, Energy consumption, pp. 42–3.
8
R. J. P. Kain, Atlas of the Tithe Files of England and
Wales (1986). Kain’s subject index contains only 44 references to ‘oxen’, of which only 24 were working oxen
– 13 in Somerset and just two in Sussex, where many
thousands were then at work.
194
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
f i g u r e 1. Distribution of draught oxen in England and Wales, 1780–1800.
and fattening oxen are differentiated.9 This might be taken to imply, but wrongly, that in the
early nineteenth century working cattle were of negligible importance in England, in contrast
to France where they were returned in every agricultural census up to the 1960s.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, oxen were used mainly in the south and west,
with the highest densities at the extremities – Kent and Sussex, Devon and Cornwall, and
Herefordshire and Monmouth – as shown in Table 1 and Figure 1. Even here, horses had made
substantial inroads. In Kent, Sussex, and Devon, oxen were still in the majority and, in purely
agricultural parishes, often comprised 70 per cent or more of the draught workforce. Overall,
as much as 90 per cent of the working herd was concentrated in one third of England, south
of a line from Kent to Shropshire. However, the overwhelming majority of all farm work was
performed by horses, while relatively few farms were now worked by oxen alone. Mixed teams,
led by horses, were common in the south-west. Cows and heifers were employed only very
occasionally for draught, in contrast to many parts of mainland Europe where the majority of
cattle irrespective of gender spent time in the yoke. The precise division of labour varied with
East Sussex RO, 4CG/3/EW2. The returns form the basis of G. H. Kenyon’s important but undervalued article,
‘The civil defense and livestock returns for Sussex in 1801’, Sussex Archaeological Coll. 89 (1959), pp. 57–84.
9
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 195
the size of farm, type of farming, soil and terrain, and custom. Oxen were employed mainly
for ploughing, and tasks requiring a long, dead-weight pull. Most of the other work together
with the carting, particularly road-work, and jobs depending on speed and agility, such as
harrowing, were performed by horses. In some counties – Devon, Hereford, and Sussex for
example – oxen were used for haulage, and in parts of the East Riding and on the Lincolnshire
Wolds almost exclusively so, the field work being the preserve of the horses.
II
It is generally held that the period after the Napoleonic Wars saw the renewed decline and
virtual disappearance of the draught ox in England, even in districts where as recently as 1800
oxen had outnumbered horses. A close reading of the evidence suggests though that oxen were
still in general use over quite large areas of southern and western England up to the 1840s, and
exceptionally the 1860s. The average conceals a complex situation, with marked variations in
the composition of working herds between regions and farming systems. Three broad regional
demographic trends can be distinguished: regions where oxen underwent a rapid or terminal
decline; those where the downturn was more gradual with substantial numbers still surviving
in 1840: and thirdly, horse-using districts where oxen were re-introduced after a long period,
sometimes centuries, of disuse. The regional distribution of working oxen c.1835 is shown in
Figure 2.
The decline was most precipitous in the West Country and Welsh borderlands where as
recently as 1800 oxen and horses had been roughly equal, or oxen even in the majority.
Described as ‘the farmer’s favourite hobby horse’, in Herefordshire in 1805, oxen did nearly
half the ploughing, half the harvesting, and a large part of the carting.10 Yet, in the mid-1830s,
they were reliably reported to be ‘no longer much used for husbandry’, and in 1865 as rare,
‘the tread of the ox having given way to the more rapid step of the horse’.11 In South Wales,
oxen had mostly vanished from the mountain districts by 1830, and at mid-century also from
Pembrokeshire, a renowned ox-breeding county, and the historic source of draught cattle used
in south Wales. By this late stage, oxen were worked regularly only in the Vale of Glamorgan;
in the mining districts, mixed teams of horses and oxen were extensively used for hauling coal.
A measure of their diminishing importance was the decision by the Glamorgan Agricultural
Association in 1832 to stop the award of prizes for ploughing with oxen.12 In Cornwall likewise,
oxen were casualties of the post-war equine surge. Where, in 1815, they were ‘everywhere to be
met with’ and, it was insisted, ‘no other county where they were so much esteemed’, twenty
years on they were no longer generally seen even in ploughing, and rarely on the roads.13 One
J. Duncomb, General view of the agriculture of
Hereford (1805), p. 116; J. Clark, General view of the
­agriculture of Hereford (1794), p. 79.
11
W. Youatt, Cattle (c.1834), p. 31; J. Duckham, ‘On the
farming of Herefordshire’, J. Bath and West of England
Agricultural Soc., 13 (1865), pp. 52–3.
12
Youatt, Cattle, pp. 52, 56–64; G. Nash, ‘The historical farm buildings of Pembrokeshire’, J. Historical Farm
10
Buildings Group 3 (1989), p. 139; R. J. Colyer, Country
Life, 4 Oct. 1973, pp. 991–2; C. S. Read, ‘Farming of
South Wales’, JRASE, 10 (1849), p. 139.
13
G. B. Worgan, General view of the agriculture
of Cornwall (1811), pp. 146–7; Youatt, Cattle, p. 26;
W. K. Karkeek, ‘On the farming of Cornwall’, JRASE 6
(1845–6), p. 147.
196
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
Traditional ox-using areas
Resurgent ox-using areas
f i g u r e 2. Distribution of draught oxen in England and Wales, c.1840.
dissident voice, a distinguished Cornish historian, contends that oxen were general in the
county in the 1850s, and slowed down the adoption there of the reaping machine.14 The first
quarter of the nineteenth century saw oxen largely given up on the English clay lands. By 1840,
they had disappeared from the Vales of Berkeley and Gloucester, the north Wiltshire dairying
districts, the north Hampshire Woodlands, the Surrey Weald, and north-west Kent. Only on
the Weald proper were they still a regular feature of heavy land husbandry.
The equine advance was slowed by spirited rearguard actions and phased withdrawals.
In Devon, apart from on the hard flinty soils on the eastern and southern borders, and the
rearing district around Barnstaple, oxen were still the rule in the 1830s, and though by then
in a minority, still quite large numbers were in place in 1850, both there and in parts of
Somerset, such as the Vale of Taunton.15 In Monmouth and Glamorgan, oxen still performed
J. Rowe, Cornwall in the age of the Industrial Revolution (1953), pp. 253–4; Karkeek, Farming of Cornwall,
p. 457.
15
Youatt, Cattle, p. 18 and passim; S. Kidner, ‘Devon
14
cattle’, JRASE 73 (1912), p. 49; J. Bettey, Rural life in
Wessex (1987), p. 36; T. Dyke-Acland and W. Sturge,
‘The farming of Somersetshire’, JRASE 11 (1851), p. 155.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 197
a ‘great proportion’ of Vale husbandry in the 1830s.16 In 1840, on the Weald, a famous bastion
of ox husbandry, they still performed a large part, possibly the majority of the work in 1840,
the typical 150–200 acre farm then possessing between 10 and 12 oxen for ploughing and road
haulage.17 On the South Downs, horses were now dominant in the western section towards
Hampshire, but in the east and centre oxen were the rule on large farms with extensive hill
pastures, such as around Brighton, where, in 1850, advancing up the hill towards him, James
Caird was confronted by three teams each of six heavy bullocks, drawing traditional wooden
ploughs, a practice he said, which ‘for waste of opportunity, of power, and of time, could
probably not be matched in any county in the United Kingdom’.18 In the North and Midlands,
oxen were now of little or no importance, with the minor exception of here and there in the
Yorkshire Dales, where they continued in use, mainly for carting, up to the 1860s, and on one
estate, at Helmsley, after 1900.19
The foregoing discussion calls into question some of the assumptions about the rate and
timing of the decline. This was slower and more attenuated than is generally assumed, while
there is clear evidence of a revival centring on three regions – the Cotswolds, the southern
chalklands, and north and west Norfolk – each of which will be examined in turn.
Horses predominated in parts of Oxfordshire as early as the sixteenth century, and by the
end of the eighteenth century were in effective control throughout the county, with oxen
largely restricted to gentlemen’s farms.20 Journeying westwards across the county in 1769,
Arthur Young encountered his first ox near Stow-on-the Wold, thence in increasing numbers
towards Gloucester.21 Though heavily outnumbered in the vales, oxen were met with more
frequently on the Cotswolds, where a revival may have been under way as early as 1789, when
Marshall reported them to be gaining ground in numbers and esteem.22 In 1809, in contrast
to his earlier visit, Young noted approvingly, ‘the increasing attention paid to oxen as beasts
of labour’ on the Oxfordshire Cotswolds: around Burford, he claimed, every farmer now had
them, where ten years before only one was kept.23 Here as throughout the entire west-central
region, the draught economy was in a state of flux, with oxen becoming more popular in some
areas, while being discarded in others.
Thus engendered, the Cotswold Revival rapidly gathered pace. In 1826, Cobbett saw oxen
doing much of the ploughing and other work on the ‘Hills’, encountering on the road between
Witney and Fairford, some of ‘the finest teams I ever saw’.24 The strength of the Oxfordshire
16
Youatt, Cattle, pp. 52, 64, 86; Nash, ‘Historical farm
buildings’, Colyer, Country Life, 4 Oct. 1973, pp. 991–2.
17
Youatt, Cattle, pp. 39–42, 46; M. Robinson, A
South Down farm in the sixties (1947 impr.), pp. 5–7;
G. Buckland, ‘On the farming of Kent’, JRASE, 6 (1845),
p. 293. And still in use in Sussex in the 1880s: R. Jefferies,
Nature near London (1893), pp. 226–30.
18
James Caird, English agriculture in 1850–51 (1852,
repr. 1967), p. 128.
19
Watts, Working oxen, pp. 14, 31.
20
E. Kerridge, The agricultural revolution (1967),
pp. 59, 64, 68; M. A. Havinden, Household and farm
inventories in Oxfordshire, 1550–1590 (1965), p. 38; id.,
‘The rural economy of Oxfordshire, 1580–1730’ (B.Litt
thesis, University of Oxford, 1961), p. 68 and passim.
Information kindly supplied by author. R. Davis,
General view of the agriculture of Oxfordshire (1794),
p. 293.
21
Young, Six weeks tour of the Southern Counties,
pp. 114–35.
22
W. Marshall, The rural economy of Gloucestershire
(1789, repr. 2005), pp. 173–4.
23
A. Young, General view of the agriculture of Oxfordshire (1809), pp. 291–3, 295–6.
24
W. Cobbett, Rural Rides (Everyman edn, 2 vols,
1912), II, p. 131.
198
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
Revival is confirmed by Dr Walton’s helpful analysis of working cattle mentioned in farm
sale notices in the period c.1820–1870. Between 1826 and 1837, fat or working oxen featured
in 71 sales, working cows in two, and a draught bull in one. Clearly, in the 1820s, oxen were
widespread, and no rarity even on the claylands. From the 1830s, Herefords replaced Devons as
the standard breed, while from the 1850s Shorthorns too were sometimes put into harness. As
their numbers gradually declined, oxen became increasingly concentrated in western districts,
on the stonebrash. In some parts of the county, the draught ox remained ‘in rude health’ up
to at least the 1870s.25 In the later 1830s in Gloucestershire, the Assistant Tithe Commissioners
reported 30 oxen in Newington Bagpath and Minchinhampton, and 20 at Rodburgh.26 Although
the revival had by then probably peaked, many oxen of both traditions were still working on
the Gloucestershire Cotswolds at mid-century.27 Inexplicably, Caird made no mention of them
when he visited the region in early 1850, possibly because oxen were not normally worked at
that time of year, and because January was a hiatus between the end-of-year sales of fat or
retired oxen, and the arrival of the new intake in February. In their relative youth, draught oxen
looked little different from other cattle. Yet four years later, we are informed by C. S. Read, a
highly dependable source, with a good knowledge of the county, that most medium-sized farms
on the stone-brash kept two teams.28 Further north, in Worcestershire, a few oxen were still
working on Breedon and on the Malvern Hills into the 1870s.29
Farm sale notices provide a measure of the popularity of draught cattle in Oxfordshire
between 1800 and 1880. Much the highest concentrations were in the Cotswold district,
although no part of the county was entirely without them. While featuring in just 4.5 per cent
of sales, disposals of oxen and ox harness fluctuated sharply from year to year, from more than
10 per cent in 1835 and 1856–9, to none at all in some years. Table 2 shows the highest turnovers
in the 1850s, and the lowest, less than 3 per cent, in the 1840s and 1860s, reflecting perhaps a
slowing of cattle movements due to cattle plague. This evidence suggests that though now in
decline oxen were still widely used in parts of Oxfordshire during the 1870s.30
The revival appears to have begun later on the chalk than on the limestone uplands. In Dorset,
in 1812, oxen were estimated to number 2250, about an eighth of the combined workforce. They
were mainly found on the heavier land to the north and west, with very few remaining on
the Downs, having been rejected as too slow, and no more than three or four teams were to
be found on the Isle of Purbeck.31 By the early 1830s oxen had made a spectacular come-back
much to Youatt’s surprise. While the draught ox had been declining for many years, he said,
of late and ‘to a quite extraordinary degree’, it had revived in some districts, while continuing
to contract in others.32 In 1854, there were reported in the chalk district to be ‘fully as many
I am much indebted to Dr J. R. Walton of Aberystwyth University, for this and other original information based on his research into Oxfordshire farm sale
notices.
26
TNA, IR 18/2810, 2803.
27
J. Bravender, ‘Farming of Gloucestershire’, JRASE
11 (1850), pp. 142, 163–4.
28
C. S. Read, ‘On the farming of Oxfordshire’, JRASE
15 (1854), pp. 222, 239.
25
W. MacDonald, ‘On the relative profits to the
farmer from horses, cattle and sheep …’, JRASE, 2nd
ser., 12 (1876), p. 30.
30
From original data kindly supplied by Dr
J. R. Walton, Aberystwyth University.
31
J. Claridge, General view of the agriculture of
Dorset (1793), p. 12; W. Stevenson, General view of the
agriculture of Dorset (1812), pp. 378–80.
32
Youatt, Cattle, p. 127.
29
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 199
ta b l e 2. Farm sales with working cattle or ox harnesses as a percentage of all sales detailing
draught animals in Oxfordshire, 1820–80.
Farm sales
detailing draught animals
Farm sales
with working cattle
Working cattle
as % of all draught animals
1820–9
380
17
4.5
1830–9
428
26
6.1
1840–9
393
11
2.8
1850–9
424
27
6.4
1860–9
390
11
2.8
1870–9
429
18
4.2
Totals
2444
110
4.5
Source: Farm sale notices, Jackson’s Oxford Journal and Reading Mercury, as per original data supplied by Dr
J. R. Walton, Aberystwyth University.
again as there were twenty years earlier’, implying a continuing increase over the 1840s, where
in other revivalist districts their numbers had by then levelled off or were in decline.33 In the
1930s, in the down parish of Corfe Cullen, old men still talked of the days when oxen were
used extensively for ploughing and carting.34
Elsewhere on the southern chalklands, the revival was on a more modest scale. On his
southern tour, Arthur Young encountered barely any oxen on Salisbury Plain.35 By the end of
the eighteenth century, most of those remaining had been driven off the Downs by sheep, but
were persevered with by a few progressive farmers.36 Yet, in the 1840s, oxen were widely used
for ploughing, with most farms possessing one or two teams.37 In the Vale of Pewsey, in 1842,
the celebrated agriculturist and politician Albert Pell had, as a pupil, learnt the management
of oxen, which he subsequently introduced onto his own Leicestershire farm.38 Wiltshire
affords well-authenticated examples of late usage, in the form of contemporary photographs of
working teams at, for example, Codford, Idstone, Bishopstone, Bratton and Albourne, all taken
between 1900 and 1919.39 In the 1850s, a few teams could be seen on the Berkshire Downs above
Lambourne. As late as 1910–15 they were still used on the chalk overlooking the Vale of the
White Horse. ‘It is pleasing’, wrote Alfred Williams, ‘to meet with oxen (yoked and in pairs)
at the plough and harrow about the farm, or attached to the cart and wagon’.40
L. H. Ruegg, ‘On the farming of Dorset’, JRASE 15
(1854), pp. 406, 412.
34
M. R. Dacombe (ed.), Dorset: up along down along
(1951), p. 33.
35
Young, Six weeks tour of the southern counties,
pp. 189–91; Bettey, Wessex, pp. 33, 36.
36
T. Davis, General view of the agriculture of Wiltshire (1794), pp. 73–4.
37
Edward Little, ‘Farming of Wiltshire’, JRASE 5 (1844),
p. 170; Caird, English agriculture, pp. 83–4. H. H. Dixon
noted in south Wiltshire the practice of ploughing with
33
Herefords for a year or two before passing them on to
the Buckinghamshire graziers. ‘History of the rise and
progress of Hereford cattle’, JRASE 29 (1868), p. 285.
38
J. Mackay, Albert Pell (1908), p. 174.
39
Photographs: e.g. Museum of English Rural Life,
University of Reading, Negative nos 35/2324, 6773. See
also Bettey, Wessex, p. 130; I. Gandy, The heart of a
village … Aldbourne (sec. edn, 1991), pp. 59–60.
40
Caird, English agriculture, p. 108: J. B. Spearing,
‘Farming of Berkshire’, JRASE 21 (1860), p. 36: A. Williams,
Villages of the White Horse (1918), pp. 69–73.
200
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
Hampshire, a predominantly chalk county, appears untouched by the Revival. Young
claimed to have seen scarcely a single ox in the county, not even at Crux Easton where, in the
early years of the eighteenth century, oxen had been employed on a regular basis by Edward
Lisle of literary fame; nor on the Russell estates at West Stratton and Micheldever, which in
1756 had purchased 32 working oxen direct from Devon.41 In contrast to the mainland, Devon
oxen drawing traditional high-gallows ploughs were a common sight on the chalk downs in
the south of the Isle of Wight.42 One farmer, near Ashley, the possessor of a steam plough, kept
eight oxen, mainly for rough work, whereas Prince Albert on a heavy clay farm at Barton on
the other side of the island, used only horses.43
Intrinsically the most interesting of the revivals and the most puzzling, was that of Norfolk.
This is partly on account of its remoteness, a hundred miles or more from traditional ox
country, and partly its hallowed position in the historiography of farm traction, being reputedly
the first county where oxen were replaced by horses.44 As early as the fifteenth century, horses
comprised about 70 per cent of the animal work force on demesne farms, and an even larger
proportion on peasant farms. By the 1630s oxen had been all but eradicated, while, at the end of
the eighteenth century, William Marshall, who knew the county well having worked for several
years as agent on an estate near Norwich, confidently proclaimed: ‘Horses are the only beasts
of labour made use of in Norfolk husbandry: there is perhaps not one OX in the county’.45
The historian of the agricultural revolution in Norfolk states that the idea of oxen supplanting
horses as urged by the agricultural reformers was never popular in the county.46
Coke, no less, is credited as having been probably the first to re-introduce draught oxen (or
‘bullocks’, as they were generally termed in East Anglia) into the county, initially for carting,
following a gift of thirty Devon cattle from the Duke of Bedford, but was forced to give them
up owing to problems with shoeing and the prejudice of his workmen who were used only to
horses.47 The use of oxen was extended to field work soon after 1800, whence they quickly gained
favour with progressive landowners and large farmers, to become by 1830 a familiar feature on
large sheep-corn farms managed on the Norfolk system. When, in the early 1840s, Almack, the
Royal Agricultural Society’s prize essayist, visited the county for the first time, he was surprised
to find few instances of where the use of oxen for ploughing had been given up: rather, most
large farms possessed two, three, or even four teams, in addition to horses.48 Whilst scathing of
the traditional system of ox management in Sussex, Caird was highly approving of the Norfolk
A. Young, The farmer’s tour through the east of
England (4 vols, 1771), III, p. 197; id., Six weeks tour of
the southern counties, pp. 209–10; Hampshire RO, 49
M89/R4/6063. I am grateful to Dr Gavin Bowie for this
reference.
42
J. Wilkinson, ‘The farming of Hampshire’, JRASE
22 (1861), pp. 355, 367.
43
Ibid., pp. 363–4.
44
Langdon, Horses, oxen, p. 88.
45
M. Overton, Agricultural revolution in England
(1996), p. 126; W. Marshall, The rural economy of Norfolk
(2 vols, sec. edn, 1795), p. 42 (Marshall’s own emphasis).
41
N. Riches, The Agricultural Revolution in Norfolk
(sec. edn, 1967), pp. 107–8.
47
The origins and early stages of the Norfolk revival
are unclear. But see Young, Norfolk, pp. 446, 479–82;
A. W. M. Shirley, Coke of Norfolk and his friends (new
edn., 1912), pp. 162–4; Trow-Smith, British livestock husbandry, 1700–1900, p. 98; S. Wade Martins, A great estate
at work (1980), passim; R. A. C. Parker, Coke of Norfolk
(1975), pp. 122–3, inexplicably makes no mention of
working oxen on the estate home farms in the 1820s.
48
B. Almack, ‘On the farming of Norfolk’, JRASE 5
(1844), p. 330.
46
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 201
practice.49 Though their popularity was then beginning to wane, ‘bullock teams’ remained a
common sight in many parts of the county up to at least the late 1850s.
The ox economy of Norfolk is comparatively well documented in the farming literature, 50
and more specifically in a farming survey of the county conducted in 1843 by Richard Bacon,
a Norwich newspaper proprietor.51 More than 100 leading agriculturists – admittedly mostly
large farmers and Whig landowners – were sent a questionnaire of some 145 questions relating
to current farming practice, some of which asked about the use of working cattle – their
numbers, breeds, utilization, management, feeding, and opinions as to their usefulness. The
results of this enquiry are incorporated into the following analysis.
III
By the early nineteenth century the mechanical superiority of the horse over the ox was
universally acknowledged, and begrudgingly even by ox enthusiasts. The horse was a specialist
worker, faster, more powerful, and more versatile. Though more economical than horses, oxen
did less work, and were valued increasingly or even principally for their meat. Technically oxen
were an anachronism, and their re-introduction might therefore seem counter-intuitive. The
key to the paradox lay in the differences between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ ox economies, and the
co-existence of two traditions, the ‘unbroken’, dating from medieval times, and still ongoing
in ancient strongholds such as Devon and Sussex; and the ‘revivalist’, in those districts where
oxen were reintroduced after a long period of horse domination. The new role of the draught
ox in the nineteenth century, and the distinguishing characteristics of the new ox economy,
will now be examined.
The new homelands of the ox were the undulating terrain and light shallow soils of the
chalk and limestone uplands of southern and west-central England, and the calcareous sands,
gravely loams, and lighter boulder clays of north and west Norfolk. A first point of difference
was that in the medieval and early modern periods oxen were deployed mainly on the heavier
soils, on account, it was claimed, of their steadier and deeper draught, and horses mainly on
the lighter soils, where their greater speed and agility was best utilized.52
According to Bacon’s survey, choice of draught animal was closely correlated with soil type.
Some 16 of the 29 current and former ox-using farms are described as light or predominantly
Caird, English agriculture, pp. 166–8.
See the following for descriptions of the Norfolk
practice: Almack, Norfolk; R. N. Bacon, Report on
the agriculture of Norfolk (1844); C. S. Read, ‘Recent
improvements in Norfolk farming’, JRASE 29 (1858),
esp. pp. 185–8; H. W. Keary, ‘On the management of
cattle’, JRASE 9 (1848) esp. pp. 435–8. Keary was chief
steward on the Holkham estate, and C. S. Read probably the most dependable source for mid-nineteenth
century Norfolk farming.
51
The returns and correspondence are deposited at
Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, Ms 4363. C. S. Read,
‘Recent improvements’, describes the respondents as
49
50
‘the best agriculturists Norfolk can produce’. To this
extent, they are unrepresentative. The responses are
of very variable quality ranging from virtual treatises
to rough notes with many questions left unanswered.
Barely half of the respondents employing oxen give
their exact numbers, although these could vary from
year to year, from two to three teams, to none at all.
52
Pre-1750, oxen were mostly used on the heavier
soils. Langdon, Horses, oxen, pp. 255–6; Bettey, Wessex,
p. 33; Trow-Smith, British livestock husbandry to 1700,
pp. 76, 93; P. R. Edwards, ‘The horse trade in Tudor and
Stuart England’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), Horses in
European economic history (1983), p. 120.
202
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
ta b l e 3. Characteristics of ox- and horse-using farms in Norfolk: soil type, farm size, cropping
system, and access to substantial areas of rough grazing, c.1843 (74 farms).
Farm Category:
Farms using
oxen and horses
Farms where oxen
were used formerly or
occasionally
Farms using
only horses
22
7
35
Light soils
13
3
4
Mixed soils
8
3
23
Heavy soils
1
1
8
Number of farms:
Soil type:
Size of farm (acres):
<150
150–299
–
1
1
7
300–499
2
3
11
500–749
8
1
8
750–999
4
1
4
1000–1499
4
>1500
Aggregate acreage:
Average farm size (acres):
–
–
–
3
4
1
1
21,440
4514
18,500
974.5
644.9
528.6
14
7
32
Cropping system:
4-course
4- or 5-course
3
5-course
2
6-course
Not known
–
–
–
3
1
–
–
1
–
1
Type of grazing:
Marsh
Meadow
5
2
–
7
–
2
Warren and heath
1
–
–
Common
1
–
–
Sheep-walk
3
2
3
Poor grass
2
1
1
Park
–
<25% in pasture
7
Not known
2
Source: Bacon Survey, Norfolk and Norwich Record Office MS 4363.
–
2
1
9
–
12
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 203
so, eleven as mixed, and two as heavy; in contrast to horse-using farms where 23 of the 35
were described as mixed, eight as heavy and just four as light (Table 3). Although best adapted
to the easy-working soils of the Norfolk Goodsands, in the west and north of the county,
oxen were also employed on the lighter soils of the east coast around Yarmouth and in the
Waveney valley on the Suffolk borders. In Oxfordshire, they enjoyed a wide distribution, on
heavier land as well as the limestone soils.53 On hill farms oxen were allocated mainly to the
gentler slopes and firmer ground, and horses to the steeper slopes and flinty soils – where the
narrower ox’s hooves were liable to damage – and loose or slippery ground on which oxen
had difficulty in keeping their footing.
Oxen became a feature in districts where farming landscapes had been re-configured, and
farms enlarged, by enclosure and reclamation. Tillage extension, more frequent cropping,
intensive cultivations, and the adoption of the four-course rotation, resulted in a sharply
growing demand for animal traction, particularly in the spring and summer quarters, putting
a heavy strain on the horses, and at the same creating a niche for the re-introduction of
working oxen as seasonal workers. The typical ox-using farm was predominantly arable, three
quarters under tillage, worked on a four- or five-course rotation of cereals, roots, clover and
grasses, with occasional courses of pulses and vegetables, and usually possessing very little
meadow or permanent grass. All Bacon’s respondents claimed to follow the four-course system,
even on land not ideally suited to it (Table 3).
A pre-requisite for employing oxen was a substantial area – upwards of four acres per head
– of rough pasture for their summer keep. In the sixteenth century Fitzherbert advised that
oxen be kept where grass was plentiful, and horses where it was scarce.54 About 60 per cent
of ox-users in the Bacon survey had access to large areas of sheep-walk, common, or marsh,
compared with only 40 per cent of horse-users (Table 3). In the 1853 Agricultural Census
about eight per cent of all land in the county was designated as sheep pasture and down, with
sizeable remnants of rough grazing still to be found in most ox-using districts.55 Although
most of the former marginal land had been brought into cultivation, large areas of down were
still un-reclaimed in some chalk districts, particularly in Dorset and Wilshire.56 In the new
ox economy, oxen were fed primarily on low-grade pasture, often on unenclosed land. In the
Middle Ages they had been better provided for: Walter of Henley had prescribed that when
working and in order to maintain condition, oxen needed to be given at least three sheaves of
oats per week, and in the summer ‘twelve pennyworth’ of grass.57 Likewise in the sixteenth
century, as Dr Thirsk points out, it was no good putting oxen to graze on a bare common
pasture after a day’s work, and expecting them to be fresh in the morning: a working ox had
to be kept on ‘lush grass’, such as was normally found only in enclosures.58
Ex inf. Dr John Walton, Aberystwyth University.
The book of husbandry by Master Fitzherbert, ed.
W. W. Skeat, (English Dialect Society, 15, 1882), p. 15.
55
Reports of the Poor Law Inspectors on agricultural
statistics (England), 1855, Schedule D, Norfolk (repr. in
BPP 1928, LII, p. 491). See also, Kain, Atlas of the Tithe
Files, p. 75 and passim.
e.g. Caird, English agriculture, pp. 56–69, 79–81.
Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, trans. E. Lamond
(1890), pp. 11–13, 23–5, 111.
58
J. Thirsk, ‘Farming techniques’, in J. Thirsk (ed.),
The agrarian history of England and Wales, IV, 1500–
1640 (1967), p. 165.
53
56
54
57
204
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
Only large or very large farms could provide the economies of scale needed to justify
employing several ox teams in addition to five or more teams of horses (see Tables 3 and 5).
Ox-using farms in the Norfolk enquiry averaged 974.5 acres, farms using oxen occasionally or
which had done so until recently 644.9 acres, and exclusively horse-using farms, 528.6 acres.
Ninety per cent of farms in the first group were of 500 acres and above, compared with only
40 per cent in the third group. This implies a farm size threshold for the ‘use’ or ‘adoption’ of
working oxen of about 500–600 acres. Two respondents reckoned it even higher, at about 800
acres, while one former user, who had recently moved to a smaller farm of 430 acres, would
use oxen again if he had 800 or 1000 acres. According to the 1851 census, Norfolk contained
about 400 farms of more than 500 acres, 5 per cent of all farms, but occupying 30 per cent
of the total farmed area.59 On this reckoning, the ox population of Norfolk in the early 1840s
numbered perhaps 4000–6000, that is, about 12 per cent of the total animal workforce. The ox
herd is modest compared with the 44,572 horses enumerated in the 1854 Agricultural Return,
and the 42,100 in the 1870 Agricultural Statistics. Locally however, the ox proportion could
be far larger, as much as 25–30 per cent, on for example the Holkham estate, which in 1851
possessed 51 farms in excess of 300 acres and 34 of more than 500 acres, most of which would
have been using oxen, or had used them formerly.60
Ox-using farms in revivalist districts were typically large. On the Dorset Downs, where in the
1850s large areas of sheep-walk still survived, farms of 1200–1500 acres were not uncommon,
and 500 acres the standard for a sheep-corn farm.61 On the Berkshire Downs, 400–1000 acres
was the norm, while on Salisbury Plain farms ranged from 800–1000 acres, with outlying
fields in some cases between two to three miles from the farmstead.62 One advantage of oxen
was that on a ‘long farm’ with outlying commons they could be kept out overnight and forage
unsupervised, whereas horses had to be brought home each evening. In Oxfordshire, a 400acre stonebrash farm kept normally two teams of oxen to four or five of horses, inferring an
adoption threshold of 300–500 acres, smaller than in Norfolk, but much larger than in the old
ox counties, such as Devon, with its preponderance of small and medium-sized farms, only
5 per cent of which were above 300 acres.63 An analysis of farm sale notices for Oxfordshire
1820–80 (Table 4) suggests a minimum adoption threshold of about 250 acres, and the
majority of users in the 400- to 600-acre size group.
Large rectangular fields were the ideal working environment. Plough oxen worked best
walking at a steady pace of one to two miles per hour in straight lines on level or gently
undulating ground. In the 1860s, the average size of fields on chalk soils was estimated at 13
Great Britain Census 1851, BPP, Accounts and
papers, LXXXVIII (1852–3), pt 2, p. 313.
60
Parker, Coke of Norfolk, p. 164. The 1851 Census
records fewer than 17,000 farms of 300 acres and
above and just over 5000 farms of 500 acres and
above in England and Wales. If farm size was the sole
determinant of ox usage, and assuming all farms in
excess of 300 acres kept them, the maximum number
of working oxen in England and Wales would have
been about 180,000, and in Norfolk and the chalk and
59
limestone districts of southern and central England
perhaps 25–30,000. This compares with Young’s estimate of 200,000 in c.1770. Ox-using farms in heavy and
medium soil districts were in the main much smaller
than on the light soils in the revivalist districts.
61
Ruegg, ‘Farming of Dorset’, p. 142.
62
Spearing, ‘Farming of Berkshire’, p. 12; Caird,
English agriculture, pp. 80–1.
63
Read, ‘Farming of Oxfordshire’, p. 239; Great
Britain Census 1851, 1, Devon.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 205
ta b l e 4. Distribution, by farm size group, of working cattle mentioned in farm sale notices,
Oxfordshire 1820–80.
Acreage
<200
200–99
300–499
500–699
>700
Mentions
1
13
16
13
8
%
2.0
25.4
31.3
25.4
15.7
Source: Farm sale notices, Jackson’s Oxford Journal and Reading Mercury, as per original data supplied by Dr
J. R. Walton, Aberystwyth University.
acres, compared with 11 acres on limestone, and just four on clay. Large fields meant less time
turning at the headlands: ploughing a three-acre field with horses, it was calculated, involved
102 turns, and a 27-acre field just 28.64 The bigger the team, the bigger the turning space
required at the end of each plough strip.
IV
The genetic lynch-pin of the revival was the emergence, from the middle of the eighteenth
century, of new or improved breeds of working cattle, in which superior draught qualities were
combined with thriftiness and quick fattening.65 Breeders sought to create a more dynamic
and active animal, designed for speed rather than brute strength, with a deep chest; powerful,
slanting shoulders; and light, elevated hind-quarters: in short, a bovine with equine characteristics, smaller and more stream-lined than the large-framed, all-purpose Longhorn, or the
stumpy barrel-shaped Shorthorn just coming into fashion. Marshall reckoned northern oxen
much inferior to the southern and western types, with little attention paid to breeding for
draught.66 Ancient black cattle of the Longhorn genus were widely distributed throughout
England in the eighteenth century. Though physically very powerful, they were claimed to be
too heavy for the plough and both too slow and lacking in versatility to meet the needs of the
‘new husbandry’. In 1623, Gervase Markham described the Longhorn as black with large white
horns tipped with black, square stocky bodies, and short legs, similar in conformation and
colour to the draught cattle depicted in the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter.67 The improved
Longhorn was unsuited for work on account of its very long upward-curving horns, which
W. H. Kirkpatrick, The seasonal distribution of
farm labour requirements (1930), pp. 14–16. See also
W. H. Long, ‘Size of fields in Devon’, The Farm Economist
11 (1935), pp. 244–5. Field sizes in the light-land revivalist
districts were much larger than in the Midlands and
West Country. A Devon survey within a radius of 15
miles around Exeter revealed an average field size of
just over 4.5 acres. Out of 7997 enclosures surveyed,
only 327 were larger than 10 acres. A. Tanner, ‘The
farming of Devonshire’, JRASE, 9 (1848), pp. 483–4.
65
For breed modifications and improvements, see
64
Trow-Smith, British livestock husbandry to 1700, ch. 5;
British livestock husbandry, 1700–1900, chs 3, 8; MooreColyer, ‘Cattle’, pp. 335–50; Youatt, Cattle, passim;
and for mid-century, Keary, ‘Management of cattle’;
J. C. Morton (ed.), A cyclopedia of agriculture (4 vols,
1855), under name of breed.
66
W. Marshall, The review and abstract of the country
reports to the Board of Agriculture (5 vols, 1818, repr.
1968), I, Northern Department (orig. pub. 1808), pp. 55–6.
67
Thirsk, ‘Farming techniques’, p. 186; Watts,
Working oxen, pp. 7–8.
206
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
required a greater distance between pairs to avoid injuries, and large headlands of up to 40
feet or more wide to turn the teams.68
The principal source of improved working cattle were the ‘middle horns’, said to be descended
from the ancient ‘red cattle’ native to certain parts of southern and western England, although
the precise origins are obscure and the lines of descent blurred. As a result of selective inbreeding and judicious crossing, by 1815 as many as 90 per cent of working cattle in southern
Britain was comprised of just four breeds: the North Devon (or Bideford), the Hereford,
the Sussex and the Pembroke (or Castlemartin), descended from the old Welsh Longhorn.
Together, they replaced the Longhorn and local breeds, such as the Gloucester, Dorset, South
Devon. and Glamorgan.69 Of the four, the most popular were the Devon and the Hereford, the
ones most often singled out for specific mention in farmers’ account books and sale particulars,
and favoured by landowners as park animals because of their pleasing appearance. Farm sales
notices suggest continuing rivalry between Devons and Herefords in Oxfordshire up to the
mid-1850s – when the latter became the standard – and, as in Norfolk, the sporadic use of
Shorthorns and – in one case – Welsh cattle, probably Pembrokes.70
The North Devon, depicted in Figure 3, had an unrivalled reputation as a worker on light
land. Quick and agile, it could keep pace with a horse, trot at speeds of up to six miles per
hour pulling an empty cart, thrive on poor land, and fatten quickly upon ceasing work. Recent
research casts doubt as to its true origins: the predominant cattle in north Devon in the mideighteenth century were, it seems, black rather red in colour, and the ruby-red Devon was a
new breed created from about this time by the Quarterly family of Molland.71 In the early
1790s, it was remarked how the ‘red breeds’ of Devon and Somerset had been progressively
increasing, and were now dispersed over a great part of the Kingdom, and adjudged the ‘best
labouring animal’. The larger and heavier-boned Pembroke was better adapted for the stiffer
soils, but reckoned by some as lively as many horses.72 There were two types of Sussex, a bigger
more powerful type for the Wealden clays, and a smaller type for the chalk downland. One
such is reputed to have run four miles against the clock over Lewes racecourse in 16 minutes.73
Smaller than the Sussex but larger than the Devon, the Hereford was a good steady worker on
medium soils, with excellent beefing properties and reputation for early maturity. In the early
years of the revival, the respective merits of the various breeds provoked widespread discussion
among breeders and adopters. One Essex enthusiast, who had tried them all, thought the
I am indebted to the late Fred (F. J.) Banks for
this and other valuable information based on usage
of plough oxen in the North Riding. See his unpublished typescript, Old ridge and furrow (nd) held by the
Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading.
69
Davis, Wiltshire (1794 edn), p. 234.
70
From information kindly supplied by Dr
J. R. Walton, Aberystwyth University.
71
The North Devon was the clear favourite of the
experts. Youatt, Cattle, pp. 18, 49 (‘a quickness of
action which no other breed can equal and which few
horses exceed’). Read, ‘Recent improvements’, p. 290
reckoned it stood the heat better than any other breed.
68
On poor land it was preferable to have either Herefords
or Shorthorns in Coke’s view. Parker, Coke of Norfolk,
p. 122. R. Stanes, ‘Devon agriculture in the mideighteenth century. The evidence of the Milles Enquiry’,
in R. Stanes et al., The husbandry of Devon and Cornwall
(2008).
72
Youatt, Cattle, p. 20; Keary, Management of cattle,
p. 440; [Ministry of Agriculture], British breeds of livestock (third edn, 1920), pp. 54–5.
73
Youatt, Cattle, pp. 39–42. Also for Sussex, see
J. P. Boxall, ‘Sussex cattle in the nineteenth century’,
AgHR 20 (1972), pp. 18–20, 27; J. Francombe, ‘On the
farming of Sussex’, JRASE 11 (1850), p. 82.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 207
f i g u r e 3. The Devon working ox.
Source: William Youatt, Cattle (n.d. but c.1835), p. 13.
Sussex suited him best: the Devon he thought too weary, the Hereford ‘gummy’ and too slow,
and the Shorthorn the worst of all.74
The North Devon was the breed of choice in all the revivalist districts, with the exception of
the Cotswolds, where the Hereford held sway. The Pembroke diffused eastwards into the Vale
of Glamorgan and the Marches where it ousted the Glamorgan and challenged the Hereford. In
the later nineteenth century the Pembroke was successfully introduced onto the South Downs
where it largely superseded the native Sussex, whose draught qualities had been sacrificed to
those of beef production.75 In contrast, the Sussex remained almost entirely confined to Kent
and Sussex. Heavier and less active but stronger than the Devon, and a slow feeder, it found
little favour outside its native homelands. Devons constituted 11 per cent and Herefords 13 per
cent of total beef sales at the Smithfield meat markets in 1838.76
After a false start, Norfolk took quickly to the North Devon. In the Bacon survey, 14 out
A. Young, General view of the agriculture of Essex
(2 vols, 1813), II, p. 358.
75
Robinson, South Down farm, pp. 5–7; A. D. Hall
and J. Russell, A report on the agriculture and soils of
74
Kent, Surrey and Sussex (1911), pp. 39–40.
76
R. Herbert, ‘Statistics of livestock for consumption
in the metropolis’, JRASE 19 (1858), pp. 497–8.
208
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
of 29 current and former ox users employed them exclusively, and seven principally, together
with a smattering of Herefords and Shorthorns. On light land, it could do as much work as
a horse, being described by one land agent as ‘by far the highest spirited Beast that I know
of … and the quickest walker’. The immigrant Devon was a class apart from the old Norfolk
breed, described by Marshall as ‘small-boned, short-legged, round-barrelled, well-loined, thinthighed – the very antithesis of the preferred form of working ox’.77
In the old tradition, oxen were worked throughout the year, often until an advanced age. By
1700, most ox users kept at least one team of horses, or mixed teams of horses and oxen. As
their numbers increased, so horses did an increasing share of the work, until the ox’s role was
reversed, from that of primarily workers to horse auxiliaries. In his Yorkshire tour, William
Marshall made a crucial distinction, central to this discussion, between cattle that were ‘beasts
of draught’, that is specialist workers, and cattle that were worked occasionally while growing,
that is dual-purpose animals.78 The latter, appropriately conformed, were later to find a ready
niche in the sheep and corn systems of southern and eastern England.
IV
Here we turn to the more narrowly practical aspects of the new ox-husbandry beginning with
selection and training.79
The typical Norfolk ox-using farm possessed between two and five teams, some eight to
twenty oxen, representing 25–40 per cent, theoretically a third, of the combined workforce.
(Table 5) The usual practice was to purchase 2- or 2½-year olds, part- or already-broken Devonbred ‘bullocks’, at local fairs or from specialist dealers each February. As many as were needed
for the campaign, including reserves, were selected out for training in teams led by experienced
oxen. Here, as in most other revivalist districts, oxen were worked in collars and reins in the
same way as horses, as an alternative to the traditional yoke. Though more expensive, the new
form of harness was thought to be more efficient, as it allowed the team to be controlled by
one man without the services of a boy, and easier for local workmen brought up with horses
to fit. Properly fitted, a collar, it was claimed, enabled the ox to pull with its whole weight and
move away smoothly, whereas the horse tended to ‘snatch’, causing the implement or vehicle
to jump. One disadvantage was that the point of draught sat lower on the shoulders, which
depressed the angle of leverage, thereby reducing the draught output. The new style of hitching,
first employed in England probably in the later eighteenth century, became one of the distinguishing marks of the new-style ox, and the revival.80
Norfolk oxen were normally worked for only half the year, from late winter to the end of the
Marshall, Rural economy of Norfolk (2 vols, 1787
edn), I, p. 323.
78
W. Marshall, The rural economy of Yorkshire (2
vols, sec. edn, 1796), I, p. 266.
79
The following sections are based on the Bacon
survey and Norfolk sources identified in the text.
80
Harnessing has attracted more scholarly interest
probably than any other aspect of ox ­
management.
77
See Fenton, Draught oxen, pp. 2–9, 29–32; C. Martell,
‘Draught oxen in Britain’, Heavy Horse World 8 (3) (1994),
pp. 50–2; E. M. Clifford, ‘Working oxen at Cirencester’, Trans. Bristol and Gloucestershire Arch. Soc., 63
(1942), pp. 1168–71. For the theory, see, R. K. Bansal
and G. E. Thierstein, ‘Engineering considerations’, in
J. L. Falvey (ed.), An introduction to working animals
(nd), pp. 80–98.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 209
ta b l e 5. Numbers of horses and oxen and herd composition on Norfolk farms, c.1843.
Number of ox teams (four oxen each)
1
2
3
4
5
Precisely specified
2
3
4
2
1
Estimated
1
6
2
–
1
3
9
6
2
2
Numbers of farms using oxen
Total farms
Total oxen
231
Total horses
471
Oxen as % of draught-workforce
33.4
Numbers of animal units per 1000
acres (horse=1.0, ox =0.6 units)
35.0
Horses per farm
On ox-using farms
22.2
On former ox-using farms
35.7
On all-horse using farms
30.3
Source: Bacon Survey, Norfolk and Norwich Records Office, MS 4363.
corn harvest, after which they were put out to grass and thence into straw yards or stalls for
over-wintering, or in the case of older cattle in their second or third year of work, for fattening
and sale. Oxen were employed principally for ploughing – preparing seed-beds, breaking-up leys,
making summer fallows – plus other jobs, which the horses being otherwise fully employed, were
unable to do. Horses did the heavy work, along with most of the harrowing and carting. Turn-ofthe-century photographs, however, show in Norfolk and Oxfordshire oxen doing a range of jobs,
such as working with harrows, and drawing laden carts and empty wagons. Oxen were preferred
for dead-weight tasks requiring a long steady pull such as stone or timber hauling.
The career of a Norfolk ox was short but physically not very demanding. The standard ‘team’
of four was sub-divided into two teams of two, each working a half-day, morning or afternoon.
On heavy land, teams of three but normally four were employed, working 6–8 hour days, with a
long rest in late morning. Bacon noted one routine in which the ploughing was let out to ‘bullock
men’, four oxen to a plough, split into two teams, each changed four times a day, and working two
sessions.81 In Wiltshire and Dorset, teams of two were the rule on lighter and teams of four on
the heavier land and steeper slopes.82 Team configuration on the Cotswolds comprised elements
of both old and new traditions. In Oxfordshire, teams of three or four were worked like horses,
from 7 am to 3 pm, with an extended break in the middle of the day. 83 In Gloucestershire,
teams of four or five in line or six or eight in pairs, were worked as in Norfolk, in spring and
summer, although it was customary for some teams to be kept ploughing all year round. 84
Bacon, Norfolk agriculture, pp. 376–7.
Little, ‘Farming of Wiltshire’, p. 170.
83
Read, ‘Farming of Oxfordshire’, p. 239.
81
82
J. Bravender, ‘On the farming of Gloucester’,
JRASE 11 (1850), p. 142.
84
210
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
During the revival, teams were generally smaller, the working day shorter, and the number of
days worked per year fewer than in former times, when teams of six or more were worked all
year round. An important question, which we will return to, is why on light soils with a low
draught resistance, oxen appear to have been systematically under-worked.
Two ‘good’ horses were reckoned equal to three or four oxen, although such relatives are
meaningless without a precise knowledge of the variables in the equation – age, weight,
condition, size of team, soil conditions, loading. Most comparisons do little more than confirm
the superiority of the horse. Yet on Norfolk turnip soils two pairs of Devons were said to work
almost as quickly as a pair of horses, and under favourable conditions to plough one or one
and a half acres of unbroken ground or to ridge-hoe five acres of turnips a day, about the same
or even slightly more than a pair of horses, thereby implying a horse-ox substitution ratio of
about 3:5.85 Little is known about changes in relative performance over time. That of horses may
have improved during the first half of the nineteenth century due to better breeding, though
this is questionable. It probably owed more to the availability of better-designed implements
with lower draughts and higher working speeds, whereas oxen continued to be worked with
ploughs of traditional design and construction, often made of wood.
Physiology and diet explain much of the difference in the work outputs of horses and oxen. 86
The ruminant ox could consume and convert into energy a fibrous diet of poor grass and crop
residues such as straw. For its digestive system to function efficiently, it needed large volumes
of bulky food eaten in one meal, and as this took a long time to digest, a large part of the day
(or nominal working day) was spent foraging or resting. Oxen, unlike horses, were unable to
increase their consumption of bulky low-energy foods to compensate for the energy expended
while working, and so tended to tire quickly and lose weight and condition. The horse’s
stomach was small but so constructed as to enable it to consume and metabolize relatively
small volumes of high-energy foods such as oats and beans at frequent intervals, and work
harder and more continuously.87
The virtues of the ox were, firstly, that it could be fed cheaply on foods of low nutritive
value; and secondly that it consumed little more energy when working than when walking
Keary, Management of cattle, p. 436. Lord Albermarle’s steward at Ouiddenham (Norf.) reckoned two
pairs of oxen changing over at the middle of the day
could plough 2–2½ acres of fallows and two acres of
seeds per diem, and eight pairs, working alternately,
nine acres. Almack, Norfolk, p. 331.
86
A growing body of scientific literature exists on
working oxen at the present day, much of it relating
to sub-Saharan Africa. A key issue now, as well as historically, is the relationship between draught output,
nutritional requirements, and use management. The
following publications are relevant to this discussion.
P. Starkey, E. Mwenya and J. Stares (eds), Improving
animal traction technology (1994); R. A. Pearson and
A. J. Smith, ‘Improving draught animal management’,
in P. Starkey et al., Improving animal traction technology; A. J. Smith, ‘Using science to understand the
85
biological constraints that limit work’, in P. Starkey
and A. Faye (eds), Animal traction for agricultural
development (1990), pp. 156–9. For physiology and
nutrition, see Falvey, Introduction to working animals;
P. R. Lawrence, ‘Nutrient requirements of working
ruminants’, in W. R. Cockrill (ed.), Working animals
international: Proc. of meetings of the World Association
for Transport Animal Welfare Studies (1989), pp. 61–9;
D. Hoffmann et al., Draught animals in rural development (1989), pp. 143–81. Research into work physiology
in France, Germany and Italy in the inter-war period is
a promising avenue for investigation.
87
For reasons of space, the economics of horse
draught can be only be touched upon. See E. J. T. Collins,
‘The farm horse economy of England and Wales in the
early tractor age’, in Thompson (ed.), Horses in European economic history, pp. 77–100.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 211
ta b l e 6. Feeding regimes on 22 ox-using farms in Norfolk, c.1843.
Summer
Grass
22
Winter
Other feed
2
Hay
Straw
Turnips
22
22
14
Beans
1
Oil cake
6
Source: Bacon Survey, Norfolk and Norwich Records Office, MS 4363.
or at rest.88 If doing light work, oxen were nutritionally more efficient than horses. Horses,
on the other hand, were physiologically better adapted for converting concentrated foods into
muscular energy. J. C. Loudon pointed out the mistake of supposing that oxen could work on
straw alone; on a diet of straw and roots, he contended, they would only plough three days
a week, or two full and two half days.89 Oxen could not produce beef if constantly worked,
or be capable of sustained work unless commensurately nourished, which greatly increased
the expense of an animal whose principal virtue was supposed to be its thriftiness and low
cost of upkeep.
Herein lay a dilemma. A poorly nourished ox could do only light or very moderate work,
while richer foods – meadow grass, clover hay, grains, roots – could be utilized more profitably
by other livestock. For these reasons, the strategy for draught was often determined by the
foods available, and their alternative use value. On all 22 Norfolk ox-using farms, oxen were
fed on low-grade pastures during summer, and in winter on hay and straw, supplemented by
turnips, turnip tops, plus a little oilcake and barley-meal (Table 6). A superior regimen in late
winter was often needed to bring the new arrivals, weak after a long overland journey, into
condition for the start of the spring ploughing. Before the fodder revolution in the eighteenth
century, the ox’s performance was limited by food shortages, especially in late winter and early
spring. Hence the not uncommon sight of teams of up to eight or ten oxen, in motion but in
reality doing very little work, each member contributing what it could.90
Employing oxen to best advantage required an understanding of the relationship between
power, speed, and work. Horses were stronger than oxen and could work at least one or two
more hours per day. Oxen could produce the same draught as horses weight for weight, but
for a shorter period of time. Soil resistance varied from an estimated 16 lbs per square inch
on clay, to 8 lbs on medium land, to just 4 lbs on light land. It was for good reason therefore
that Norfolk farmers chose not to work their oxen too hard, and restrict them to light land.
The expression ‘strong as an ox’ belies the reality. The short working year, abbreviated working
day, and long breaks for foraging and ingestion, were designed to eke out and replenish its
P. Buttery et al., ‘Animal response to nutrient
supply’, in, E. Owen et al., Livestock and wealth creation (2005), p. 167.
89
Cited in E. Wiliam, The historical farm buildings of
Wales (1986), p. 122.
90
A further factor, glossed over here, is the weight of
the animal, as weight and draught were directly correlated. Clark suggests that in the fourteenth and fifteenth
88
centuries cattle were 80 per cent of the height and
half the weight of eighteenth-century cattle. A young
ox may have weighed little more than five hundredweight. See G. Clark, ‘Labour productivity in English
agriculture’, in Campbell and Overton (eds), Land,
labour and livestock, p. 217; M. E. Turner, J. V. Beckett,
and B. Afton, Farm production in England, 1700–1914
(2001), pp. 176, 195, 199–200.
212
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
short-term energy reserves. Though comprising a third or more of the animal workforce, oxen
produced at most only 15–20 per cent of the draught. Devons worked best when lightly or very
moderately loaded, on level or gently sloping ground, on light dry compact soils, working in
shifts, and the weather not too hot. A good Devon, Bacon was told, would plough as much
light land as a horse if a steady draught was required, but for hard work, only horses would do.
Horses and oxen could exert a force equal to about an eighth of their respective body weights.
A mature horse normally weighed between a quarter and a third more than a four- to five-year
old working ox, and could exert not only greater pulling power, but a maximum pull of up to
70–80 per cent of its body-weight in short bursts. Oxen were most effective in the mass, pulling
dead-weight loads of stone or timber, or drawing heavy trenching ploughs used for reclamation
work and, ironically, recovering immobilized steam traction engines.91 A remarkable feat of
haulage took place at Preston Manor near Brighton in 1797. A contemporary print shows 86
oxen in six columns abreast, drawing a windmill two miles uphill from Regency Square near
the sea-front, to the Dyke Road high above the town.92
The horse was a specialist draught animal with a long working life, typically twelve to fifteen
years, whereas the ox was taken from the plough to be fattened at a young age, normally five
or six years. The Norfolk practice was to retire working bullocks at the end of their second
or third working summer to be sold later in the year at the Norwich or London Christmas
markets.93 Bullock fattening was a two-storied enterprise producing old and young beef,
the former principally grass-fed, the latter intensively, on roots, grains and cake. Devons
and Herefords matured quickly, and, weighing upwards of 84–90 stones (1200 lbs), were an
important source of the huge marbled roasting joints favoured by catering establishments,
large wealthy households, and by epicures.94 On the Cotswolds, retirees were usually sold onto
specialist graziers in the south Midlands for finishing and eventual sale.95
VI
While increasingly of academic importance, the respective merits of oxen and horses continued
to be debated up to at least the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1880s, Professor Wrightson of
the Royal Agricultural College was urging Scottish crofters to use cows instead of horses, a
practice never much favoured in Britain.96 Whether and to what extent oxen paid is a nice
question, difficult to answer because few contemporary farm accounts distinguish working
from other cattle, and because of the seemingly insuperable methodological problems involved
in allocating costs and revenues between jointly supplied outputs – work, meat and manure.
That arable beef paid only in the dung-heap, and seldom ever directly, is a well-worn axiom.
Yet, apart from one, who complained that they ate too many turnips, all Bacon’s respondents
Robinson, South Down farm, p. 6.
Watts, Working oxen, pp. 19–20 (together with a
photograph of the original).
93
Keary, Management of cattle; Trow-Smith, British
livestock husbandry, 1700–1900, pp. 166–7.
94
Meat as such is a neglected topic. See though,
R. Perren, The meat trade in Britain (1978), esp. ch. 2;
91
92
Trow-Smith, British livestock husbandry, 1700–1900,
pp. 257–8; Morton, Cyclopedia, II, ‘Meat’.
95
Read, ‘Farming of Oxfordshire’, p. 239.
96
J. Wrightson, ‘Cows for draught purposes’, J. Bath
and West of England and Southern Counties Soc., fifth
ser., 5 (1910–11), pp. 1–17.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 213
reckoned oxen profitable on farms where horses were a major budgetary item, and summer
workloads large enough to provide employment for a minimum of two teams. In theory, the
ox’s technical disadvantages were offset by its lower marginal and opportunity costs, and the
increasing value of its meat while working. The consensus was that oxen were cheaper for
ploughing, and horses for all-round performance.
This is a convenient point at which to summarize the differences between the ‘new’ and ‘old’
traditions. Table 7 suggests little continuity, and the ‘Revival’ as representing a more or less
clean break with the past. Indeed, in the early days, workmen were sometimes hired from the
ox-exporting districts to teach local workmen how to manage the new and unfamiliar draught
species.
The revival reached its zenith sometime in the 1840s, after which the working herd steadily
declined, and by 1914 numbered nationwide probably fewer than 50 to 100 teams. In 1850, it
stood at perhaps 40,000 head, or 20 per cent of its 1790 level, and by 1880 fewer than 3000.
In Cornwall, the last team is said to have been disbanded in 1887, and in Devon and the Vale
of Glamorgan about 1912.97 They survived longer in the south-east: on the Morghead estate at
Tenterden in Kent up to 1920, the Glassenbury estate near Goudhurst in Sussex up to 1938,
and at Birling Gap in the same county until 1929.98 They were given up at Aldbourne on the
Berkshire–Wiltshire borders about 1910.99 In Norfolk the final few surviving teams were broken
up between 1900 and 1910. With one famous exception, oxen died out in the Cotswolds in the
early 1930s.100 In the Second World War, in Scotland, a cow and mare were recorded working
in tandem in Aberdeenshire and, about the same time, ox-carts were reported on Fair Isle
in the Northern Isles.101 The last regularly worked team in Britain, in Cirencester Park, was
filmed by Claude Frieze-Green, the pioneer colour cinematographer, in the late 1920s. A
decade later, H. J. Massingham said a tearful goodbye to ‘Blossom’, the lead ox. The Park team
was eventually disbanded in 1964 on the retirement of the head ox-man, Ted Smith, with the
distinction of having outlived the commercial steam-plough, the last of which was sold by
auction at Hall Farm, Little Hadham in Hertfordshire, four years previously.102
The reasons for the ox’s demise can only be touched on. One was the progressive reduction
in the area of rough pasture and the improvement, using purchased fertilizers, in the quality of
George Copp, letter to The Western Morning Mail,
5 June 1964: S. Kidner, ‘Devon cattle’, JRASE 73 (1912),
pp. 46–52; ex inf. St Fagans National History Museum,
Apr. 2008; J. G. Jenkins, Life and tradition in rural
Wales (1976), pp. 34–5.
98
Sussex: H. J. Massingham, Shepherd’s Country
(1938), p. 67; G. K. Whitehead, ‘The passing of the
draught ox’, Country Life, 2 Sept. 1952, pp. 758–9. Kent:
ex inf. Richard Filmer, Ashford, May 2008.
99
Gandy, Heart of a village, pp. 59–60.
100
Photograph of oxen at Northern Farm, Blofield,
Norfolk, c.1908. Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, Photograph Collection, DX 1120. And
about the same date also in Cambridgeshire: F. Gambie,
‘Thriplow in my young days’, ­
Cambridgeshire Local
97
History Soc. Bulletin 29 (1974), pp. 34–8. For the Cotswolds, see the interesting correspondence on the late
use of oxen in The Oxford Times, 6 July 1951.
101
Fenton, Draught oxen, pp. 30–36, 41.
102
‘The lost world of Frieze-Green’, ‘The Open Road’,
BBC 2, first screened 25 Apr. 2006. Dr John Walton
informs me that the film has been restored by the
British Film Institute, and is currently viewable online on the BFI’s own website, and individual episodes
on YouTube. Creasey, Draught oxen; Massingham,
Shepherd’s ­country, pp. 65–9; Whitehead, ‘Passing of
the draught ox’, pp. 758–9; Ted Smith, My life with oxen,
undated typescript [c.1957], Museum of English Rural
Life, Archives, D76/12.
214
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
ta b l e 7. Characteristics of old ‘unbroken’ and ‘new’ ox economies
Characteristics
Old ‘unbroken’ tradition
‘New’ resurgence
Topography
Level ground
Hilly, undulating land
Soils
Mixed-heavy
Light
Standard of farming
Traditional
Progressive
Farming-cropping system
2- to 3-field
Crop-fallow
Mixed farming
4- to 5-course rotation
Sheep-corn
Pasture provision
Meadow
Rough grazing
Farm size
Medium-large
Large >400 acres
Farm layout
Open fields; small enclosures.
Large regular-shaped fields,
post-enclosure
Breed
All-purpose traditional
Specialized dual-purpose
Breed conformation
Heavy. Large framed. Irregularly
conformed.
Lighter, smaller-framed with defined
draught characteristics
Strength, agility
Strong, slow, best for heavier land
Smaller, quicker, better adapted for light
land
Working routine
Worked 4–8 years, all-year round,
full days, general purpose,
medium-heavy work
Worked 2–3 years, spring and summer
only, half-days, mainly ploughing,
light-moderate work
Size of teams
6–10
2–4
Harnessing
Traditional yoke
Collar and reins
Feeding
Meadow, better quality pasture, hay,
straw, plus high-energy foods when
working
Low-grade pasture in summer. Straw
hay, turnips, plus grains, cake in winter
Fattening, slaughter
Killed 6–10 years in spring-summer
Killed 5–6 years for Christmas market.
Adopters
Broad, mostly medium-large farmers
Landowners, gentlemen farmers, larger
tenants.
marginal grazing to a standard where it could fatten sheep. Another was the further widening
of the performance gap, by the use of improved implements with lower draughts specifically
designed for horses, and machines so geared as to run at much higher speeds than could be
attained by oxen. Mechanical harvesters posed special problems. Maude Robinson, whose
father farmed on the Downs at Saddlescombe near Brighton in the Golden Age, thought the
‘picturesque custom’ of using bullock teams was ended by ‘the blessed invention’ of the selfbinder: six or eight large animals proved too clumsy to negotiate the corners, especially on
the last turns in the middle of the field, leaving a large area of corn to be cut by the scythe.103
The rise of the specialist beef industry, and growing demand in artisan and middle-class
households for younger meat and smaller leaner joints, was a further disincentive to keeping
older cattle. Cross-breeding and high-feeding had by the 1830s rendered beef stores ready
103
Robinson, South Down farm, p. 7.
t h e l at t e r-day h i s t o ry o f t h e d r au g h t ox i n e n g l a n d 215
for the butcher at three to four years, and by the 1870s at two and a half to three years, as
against six or seven years for a typical worker.104 Breeders could now obtain a better price for
two-year old steers when sold for feeding than for work. In 1878, J. Algernon Clarke in his
retrospective survey, saw a situation where rising meat prices and high feeding were ‘pressing
to banish such animals [draught oxen] altogether’.105 To meet the demands of the feeders, the
working breeds were re-conformed and their beefing properties enhanced. The demise of ‘the
true Devon’ 106 was already being lamented by a Norfolk farmer in 1843.107 With the exception
of the Pembroke, which had retained many of its draught characteristics, by the end of the
nineteenth century all the working breeds had been re-classified as beef breeds. Between 1838
and 1858, the proportions of Devons and Herefords sold at the London meat market fell from
12 and 13 per cent to five and nine per cent respectively, reflecting partly the growing preference
for Shorthorns and other early-maturing breeds, and partly the smaller numbers of workers
coming forwards.108 The Devon was now much more compact, with lighter shoulders and
shorter hind legs. The transfer of weight from the fore to the rear quarters increased the ratio
of flesh to bone, and of the more valuable roasting to cheaper boiling joints. Decisive too was
the growing numbers of heavy horses used for town work, and large sums fetched by five or sixyear old geldings trained for shaft work.109 The generous prices paid for town horses, combined
with the opportunity to buy them back at nine- to ten-years old at a discount, still capable of
several years of productive work, may ultimately have tipped the scales. Livestock disease was
a particular threat in the 1850s and 1860s, causing severe debilitation among working cattle
and premature retirement of infected teams.110
The passing of the draught ox was the culminating stage in a centuries-old process of
steadily increasing specialization in farming, resulting in the now rigid division of stock into
food producers and workers. During its re-incarnation, the ox played a secondary but useful
role on sheep and corn farms in the critical early stages of Thompson’s ‘Second Agricultural
Revolution’. It had shown a rare ability at re-invention, finding new niches, and providing an
aesthetically satisfying as well as practical solution to a pressing problem, namely the need for a
cheap and elastic source of draught power at busy times when the horses were fully occupied.
Adopters of oxen were mostly large landowners, country gentlemen, and large farmers, a class
far removed from the biblical stereotypes in the famous passage in the Book of Ecclesiastes
(38:25): ‘How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that
driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks’.111
H. Evershed, ‘The early fattening of cattle and
sheep’, JRASE, third ser., 1 (1890), pp. 47–64; but also
much earlier than this: Youatt, Cattle, p. 18.
105
J. A. Clarke, ‘Practical agriculture’, JRASE, 2nd
ser., 14 (1878), pp. 362–5.
106
Bacon Survey: Norfolk and Norwich Records
Office, Ms 4363 (response of Mr Clowes of Helmsley).
107
For breed modification see P. Brassley, ‘Livestock
breeds’, in Collins, Agrarian history, VII, pp. 555–6;
Youatt, Cattle; British breeds of livestock, p. 48; MooreColyer, ‘Cattle’, pp. 335–48; Trow-Smith, British livestock husbandry, 1700–1900, ch. 8; Boxall, ‘Sussex cattle’,
104
pp. 23–4; W. G. C. Britten, ‘Hereford cattle’, JRASE 74
(1913), pp. 54–57; G. H. Garrard, A survey of the agriculture of Kent (1954), pp. 153–4.
108
Herbert, Statistics of livestock, p. 497.
109
Chivers, The Shire horse (abridged edn, 1978), chs
3–7; F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century horsesense’, EcHR, 29 (1976).
110
Robinson, South Down farm, pp. 56–67.
111
J. F. Burke, for one, was highly disparaging of oxen,
and ‘the uncouthness of the yoke and goad, when compared with the spirit of the horses, the gayer harness, and
the whalebone whip’. British husbandry, 1 (1834), p. 179.
216
ag r i c u lt u r a l h i s t o ry r e v i e w
From the late eighteenth century the draught ox underwent a sea change, to re-emerge with
new duties to perform and its standing greatly enhanced. James Caird described the systematic
management of large farms in west Norfolk as ‘not surpassed in any district of England’.112
Here, as in all the light-land arable districts where it flourished, the revitalized ox was a symbol
of rank and competence, and source of prestige. Paradoxically, its revival coincided with the
beginnings of the ‘Second Agricultural Revolution’, and the first stage in the industrialization
of English farming. Later, in its twilight years, it came to occupy a place of honour and special
niche in the national imagination.
Formally, the ox resurgence can be analysed as the adaptation of an obsolete technology
to fit a new set of production functions, in the same way as the scythe and heavy hook had
replaced the sickle for cutting corn, and the turnip was transformed from a fodder supplement
grown in small patches to become the mainstay of the ‘new husbandry’.113 The post-medieval
ox underwent a succession of alternating revivals and downturns.114 In France, in the later
nineteenth century, oxen from the Morvan in Burgundy were driven up-country onto the
large sugar-beet farms of Picardy and Nord for deep ploughing, and fed on beet-tops, pulp
and straw.115 One account describes such a farm in the Paris Basin in the 1850s, whose routines
were reminiscent of those of Norfolk, that is to say, oxen working half-days, in just spring and
summer, wearing collars like horses.116 In the two World Wars and inter-war depression, oxen
were re-introduced onto farms in eastern and central Europe as an economy measure.117 In wars
generally, the conflict zones reverted to oxen, out of fear of their horses being appropriated
by the occupying armies.118 Since 1990, the crumbling of the Soviet trade bloc, and cessation
of subsidized oil exports to client states, has prompted an ox revival in Cuba, while the high
cost of mechanical traction and the hard labour of cultivating oxidized clay soils has led to
the replacement of hand-hoes by the intermediate technology of ox-power in parts of central
Africa. In the developing world at any rate, the ox story, it seems, still has a long way still to
run.119
112
Caird, English agriculture, p. 162. For similar
comment on farming standards in other revivalist districts, see Caird, passim; Read, ‘Recent improvements’,
‘Farming of Oxfordshire’ and county prize essays in
JRASE 1st and 2nd ser.
113
E. J. T. Collins, ‘Harvest technology and labour
supply in Britain’, EcHR 22 (1969), pp. 453–72; Raine
Morgan, ‘The root crop in English agriculture, 1650–
1870’ (PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1979).
114
Langdon, Horses, oxen, p. 285.
115
A. Demangeon, La Picardie et les regions voisons
(fourth edn, 1973); Liebowitz, ‘Persistence of the draught
ox’, pp. 10–11.
116
F. R. de la Trehonnais, ‘Horse labour in France’,
JRASE 45 (1858), pp. 419–2.
117
In Hungary, for, example, between 1935 and 1942,
the horse-power supplied by draught oxen and yoked
cows rose from 17.8% of total tractive power to 21.3%,
while that supplied by draught horses fell from 76.4%
to 71.0%. I. Csoppus, ‘Mechanisation of plough-land
production in Hungary 1920–1944’, paper presented at
the Conference Internationale des Musees Agricoles
(CIMA), Budapest, Aug. 1982.
118
Ex inf., Prof. Francois Sigaut, Maison des Sciences
de l’Homme, Paris, Jan. 2009.
119
Starkey et al. (eds), Improving animal traction
technology, relating mainly to Africa, esp. pp. 66–81. For
the ox revival in Cuba see R. S. Medina, ‘The Cuban
ox revival’, The Land 5 (2008), pp. 44–46; A. Rios,
‘Improving animal traction in Cuba’, in P. Starkey
and P. Kaumbutho, Meeting the challenges of animal
­traction (1999), pp. 296–8.